Why sould FADEC reduce fuel consumption at all?
Cobalt wrote:
Why sould FADEC reduce fuel consumption at all?
It may reduce it a bit just through more accurate analysis of the environmental conditions and fuel metering. That is certainly the case in the CJ2 vs CJ2+ where the big difference is FADEC on the engines. But it is mostly about simplicity for the pilot and providing engine protection against hot starts etc.
That is what I thought – the PT6 gas generator stage in steady state simply gets a certain quantity of fuel per unit of time, and I can’t see how FADEC makes any difference at all to the efficiency of the engine at steady state. There is no ignition timing to adjust or separate mixture to set.
Of course it is worthwhile, not only to prevent hot starts, but also to protect from overtorque (or less than book performence because of fear from overtorque), only in aviation it could be considered an innovation that we no longer rely on humans to observe simple limitations where exceeding them costs hundreds of thousands.
I think the video is great. It’s a cool video that say “here it is, all the things you would want in a modern engine”. The customers are aircraft manufacturers in any case, and they couldn’t care less about this video, or any other video.
Magically the TBO rose to 5000hrs from 3600hrs now that they’re starting to feel the threat from the Denali and the GE Catalyst engine. Just shows you that it had absolutely nothing to do with safety, just greed. This is everything I hate in aviation, summed up. I really hope GE eats into P&W’s stockholders earnings, but unfortunately they won’t as the monopoly stays intact.
re: FADEC and turbine engine efficiency – what controls the variable stator vanes?
If it is ECU, then, logically, not much of the fuel savings, but if they are controlled by FADEC, then it’s a different story, right?
Or am I missing something here?
arj1 wrote:
re: FADEC and turbine engine efficiency – what controls the variable stator vanes?
What variable stator vanes?
I highly doubt FADEC will make much fuel savings vs hydromechanical controls but it will definetly give a lot of engine protection from abuses in slow starts or high torque runs as the computer will have a precise control on propeller/fuel vs torque/temps and this justifies a lot of TBO increase…
If you combine with an AT system you may get some fuel saving but only from changes outside the steady state as these tends to be grossly estimated by pilots (pitch then power? power then pitch? both?)
arj1 wrote:
That thing?
Doesn’t exist on PT6 or even normal turbofan engines.
